http://www.amcn.com.au/news/1506/10-mad-bikes-from-mad-max/Film critics say George Miller’s Mad Max reboot will redefine action movies. Here’s the inside story on the motorcycles that have a starring role
Into the sandy hell of Fury Road roars a convoy of Aussie-built jalopies. Bouncing along beside them are squads of outriders on some of the trickest motorcycles you’re likely to see this year. They look like backyard lash-ups screwed together by bikers with a lust for raw adventure. For Aussie off-road legend Stephen Gall this has been a part of his life for the past two decades. Gall has travelled Fury Road with director George Miller’s core crew since way back in 2007.
He worked with stunt co-ordinator Guy Norris and production designer Colin Gibson to create a survivalist theme for vehicles used in the movie. “We ended up building 47 motorcycles in a converted bus terminal in Villawood, Sydney, alongside the film’s cars and trucks,” he says. “Initially we secured pre-production FZ1s and R1s off Yamaha Australia and fitted them with long swingarms, as used in American hillclimbing. “They had to look like bitsers, made up from scrounged materials, to suit the Mad Max image.”
The bikes were tested at Gall’s Gold Coast base and on a special dirt track outside Broken Hill in 2010.
“Eventually we settled on a range of Yamaha WR, YZ and Tenere 660 models with some special versions of the R1, a Honda Gold Wing and a Royal Enfield with a sidecar,” Gall says.
Yamaha provided most of the motorcycles and still owns 10 of them, as they are Australian pre-production models. Some of them can easily be turned back into standard form. A crew of up to half a dozen mechanics built the bikes and maintained them on the film set. As a rule, whenever there was a hero bike that would appear in front of the camera there would always be a duplicate ready as a spare. “Our chief mechanic was Matt Bromley (owner of DeVice Custom Motorcycles in Newcastle), who was in charge of the Villawood workshop and then spent most of 2012 with us on the set in Namibia in south-west Africa,” says Gall.
It was a huge operation, with a film crew totalling 1500 and a cast of 55 actors. “There were at least 100 stunt performers on the set and the energy was amazing,” he told AMCN. “When we weren’t filming, my stunt crew had their own jumping practice area where we’d be riding a YZ250 and FZ1000.” Here Gall explains exclusively to AMCN readers, the major motorcycles featured in what has already become one of the year’s most popular and talked-about films...
To see the bikes and read all about them, grab yourself a copy of AMCN Vol 64 No 24 out from 11 June, or available for digital download from 10 June.
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BIKES CAN BE Seen in Moorebank 26th June NSW http://www.trooperlu.com.au/
